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3DSMax FSXMaterial Black Diffuse map (Solved)

Skinner_11

Skinner_11

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hungary
So I started texturing my model in 3DSMax.

I am using the P3D SDK, and i called a Multi-Subobject material for the object, and added two FSXMaterials inside it, both with a DDS image used for diffuse map.
My problem is that the full object is showing up in black, even in 3DSMax...

baj.jpg

baj2.jpg
 
Interesting, normally a black surface suggests the map is missing. But in this case, I wonder...have you tried to render the scene...it would be interesting to know if 3dsmax only "sees" dds imagery via the render engine. I never knew max could accept dds images, but I just googled it, and it appears it can.

Historically, I made my images in photoshop using native PSD format, and only made dxt images for the sim itself.
 
Nevermind, it has been sorted out.

Of course it happened because I didn't pay enough attention...

I applied invalid texture ID's to the surface, that was the simple mistake why the texture not appeared. :banghead:

Anyway, thank you guys for the answer.:wave:
 
I'm curious if anyone knows of a good reason to use multi-materials in max/gmax? I guess maybe on something rounded like a fuselage where you wanted to use multiple texture sheets or material settings on different parts, yet detaching the faces and applying a mono-material to each would screw up your smoothing groups? Honestly I'm curious because I've always detached whatever faces I wanted to use another material on and simply applied a mono-material to each. Multi-materials don't survive the export from any evidence I've seen (I've never seen a multi-material in MCX) and as near as I know material IDs never leave Max/gmax either? Seriously in seven years of messing around with this program I've never used a multi-material other than to play with them. I've never set a material ID either consequently and frankly it all seems like a huge unnecessary PITA. I do understand the concept and I can make them work, I just can't see a good reason to use them?

Enlighten me please?

Jim
 
Some people use Multimaterials quite successfully, but material IDs are very useful at the mapping stage. Bill Leaming posted about them at FSDS some years ago and I shamelessly added this to my mapping in Gmax tutorial series (extra extra, readallaboutit, get your copy of part 3 here, pardon the plug).
 
I can see how that works (and it's slick no doubt) but I don't see how you set a new planar map i.e top down, right side, left side, etc. ...or did you use a box map at the early stages before you started applying UVW Unwraps?

See what I would do, and this is my self-taught, howamigonnadothis, complete failure to read help files or tutorials method - for the faces you assigned material ID 1 for example, select them just as you did but instead of assigning a material ID I'd just detach them in place and probably apply a planar map using the gizmo to align the plane so it best approximates the "overall mean average flatness" (yes, I made that up :p) of the polys I'm mapping. I guess one disadvantage of doing it that way is you can't turn on all material IDs and see the rest of your UVWs which makes laying them out on the texture a PITA but I usually just print screen the UVWs with PS open in another window and then reload the texture which get's 'em close, then when they're all on the texture sheet I bake a base map with xNormal (like lithunwrap) and maybe shuffle some things around on a second pass for fine tuning. I do like the idea of having all the UVWs available in the editor though so I may try this. Still doesn't really have any connection with multi-materials though, in fact it seems if you had 10 different material IDs for mapping and ultimately only used a 3x multi-material you'd need to go back and set material IDs again at some point between mapping and applying materials - that's a lot of poly selecting and dear ole ignore backfacing (or not) is bound to rear it's ugly head at least a couple times, lol.

Great work on the tutorials BTW, thanks much for your efforts.
 
I have an aircraft fuselage that is mapped using 4 separate textures (this is in FS9), left_front, left_aft, right_front, and right_aft. If these were mono-materials then I would have 4 detached sections of fuselage, which can cause huge shading errors. So a multi-material is required in this kind of situation.
 
JRobinson said:
I can see how that works (and it's slick no doubt) but I don't see how you set a new planar map i.e top down, right side, left side, etc. ...or did you use a box map at the early stages before you started applying UVW Unwraps?
Click to expand...
Note the new PolySelect modifiers, followed immediately with UVW Map modifiers. By simply adding new modifiers on the stack, you are essentially accomplishing the same thing you have been doing by detaching first, then UVW Mapping.

For scenery your current technique isn't so much of a much, since detached polys are most likely to be at right angles so "seams and smoothing" aren't going to be an issue. For an aircraft, or any rounded body object it will be an issue.
 
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n4gix said:
For scenery your current technique isn't so much of a much, since detached polys are most like to be at right angles so "seams and smoothing" aren't going to be an issue. For an aircraft, or any rounded body object it will be an issue.
Click to expand...

Not to mention that a scenery object likely wouldn't be textured at anywhere near the resolution of a user aircraft so in most cases even if it was round it would still use just one material. In that case you can weld the parts back together and fix the smoothing after mapping if need be.
 
I am new to this scenery object thing, but usually what i do is export the model to OBJ, and import it into MCX.

Then I can pack the textures into 1 file, and also place the building down directly...

This is my current workaround, but if you guys have a better idea, I am listening :)
 
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